1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to character display for a digital versatile disc (DVD) player and particularly to a character display apparatus and method for a DVD player using font data recorded on a disc.
2. Description of the Prior Art
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional character display system for a DVD player. As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional character display system is provided with a pickup 102 for detecting data recorded on a disc 101, a high frequency processing section 103 for processing the detected data of the pickup 102 and outputting video and/or audio signals, a font ROM 104 for storing font data corresponding to multi-languages, a character generation section 105 for receiving the font data stored in the font ROM 104 and generating character signals of characters for subtitle processing a language selected by a user, and a controller 106 for controlling the high frequency processing section 103, the font ROM 104 and the character generation section 105.
The operation of the conventional character display system will be described hereinafter.
First, when a disc is inserted in a DVD player thereby initiating a playback, the pickup 102 detects data recorded on the disc and outputs them to the high frequency processing section 103.
Accordingly, the high frequency processing section 103 processes the detected data of the pickup 102 and outputs video signals thereby displaying images on a screen.
At this time, if the user inputs a language selection key signal (not shown), the controller 106 recognizes it and controls the character generation section 105.
Thus, the character generation section 105 reads the font data of the language selected by the user among the font data of the multi-languages stored in the font ROM 104 for multilingual character subtitle processing and outputs the corresponding character signals.
However, conventionally, font data of all the multi-languages had to be stored in the DVD player, if multilingual character subtitle processing is needed (for example, 32 languages in standard for DVD players). As a result, ROM (s) having larger memory capacity must be used thereby increasing the cost of manufacturing DVD players.